March 12, 2010 at 5:47 pm · Categories: Colombo, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Groundviews
Justice C.G. Weeramantry was bestowed Sri Lankabhimanya, the highest National Honour of Sri Lanka in 2007. Justice Weeramantry also won the UNESCO Peace Education Prize in 2006 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2007, considered alternative Nobel Prize.
In this interview conducted a few months ago, Justice Weeramantry talks about the importance of peace education in post-war Sri Lanka as a pillar of reconciliation. He also looks back at his career in law and experience as a Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1991 to 2000.
March 10, 2010 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“You never see it comin’ till it’s gone”
– ‘Falling & Flyin’, Jeff Bridges in ‘Crazy Heart’
Seeing it comin’: Will the Tamils silently celebrate and the Sinhalese secretly curse the day that Prabhakaran died? With his secessionist fundamentalism and ghastly terrorism, he was the biggest obstacle to achievable autonomy for Tamils and the best excuse for the Sinhala establishment’s tardiness in devolving power to the Tamil speaking periphery. Now the North is no longer hostage to secessionism and the South is bereft of a human shield against democratic demands for devolution.
There was an old Cold War joke about the thief who broke into the Kremlin and stole, among other things, the complete results of the next election. Well, one …
March 9, 2010 at 2:24 am · Categories: Colombo, Environment | by Nalaka Gunawardene
Piyal Parakrama on Sri Lanka 2048 TV show
Piyal Parakrama’s smile was regular and genuine, but it could be also be a bit misleading. Those who engaged him found that there was a keen mind, passionate heart and a sharp (yet always courteous) tongue behind that disarming smile. Opponents dismissed him lightly at their peril.
In public and media debates, Piyal could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. That flutter and buzz are now abruptly silenced with his sudden death on March 3 at age 49. Another public spirited player has left the stage all …
March 8, 2010 at 1:00 pm · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dr. P. Saravanamuttu
The 24th of February marked the first month anniversary of the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, the Lanka E-News journalist. Two special Police teams are said to be on the case. They have however, not come up with any information as to Ekneligoda’s whereabouts.
Ekneligoda’s disappearance is yet another statistic of shame in the long list of disappearances, abductions and extra-judicial killings that have targeted the media in particular over the last four years. His disappearance, it should be noted, took place in the course of a presidential election campaign the first post –war island-wide electoral contest in this country for two decades. The war – the one that it between the GOSL and the LTTE is over and cannot be cited …
March 8, 2010 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, Politics and Governance | by Groundviews
Arvind Kejriwal is one of India’s foremost champions of the Right to Information. Awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006, Arvind has won a number of awards for his pioneering work in India. As noted on the Ashoka Foundation site,
Arvind uses a 2001 law called the Right to Information Act (RTIA) to bring political power back to the people of India. The law began in Delhi, and has since spread to eight other states, opening opportunities for citizens to hold their governments accountable to high standards of transparency and integrity. Through his organization Parivartan, Arvind raises awareness …
March 7, 2010 at 7:23 am · Categories: Colombo, Media and Communications | by Groundviews
Manik de Silva is the most senior and longest-serving Editor of an English newspaper in Sri Lanka. Presently the Editor of the Sunday Island, Manik was also a former Editor of the Daily News. In July 2009, he was elected as the President of the Editors Guild.
I interviewed him in July 2009, just around two months after the end of war. Our conversation touched on aspects of Manik’s life and how he took to journalism, how the media industry and practice of journalism have undergone dramatic change in recent years, the freedom of expression and threats to independent media.
March 7, 2010 at 6:56 am · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Kalana Senaratne
The sudden and allegedly suspicious death of former General Secretary of the UNP and Minister of Transport, Highways and Civil Aviation, Gamini Athukorala (in 2002) seemed to have marked the end of a critical phase in Ranil Wickremasinghe’s political career; a phase which spanned from the early 1990s to 2002. During this phase, Ranil saw most of the charismatic and senior colleagues in the UNP being assassinated [President Premadasa, Lalith Athulathmudali (then in the DUNF), Gamini Dissanayaka et al], or pass away (Gamini Athukorala). The deaths of these leaders, almost effortlessly and unwittingly made Ranil the undisputed Leader of the UNP, as well as of the Opposition, and more importantly, made him remain there without much trouble.
The next critical phase …
March 3, 2010 at 11:30 am · Categories: Batticaloa, Development, Environment, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War, Trincomalee | by Devanesan Nesiah
A perceptive and sensitive Sri Lankan has noted;
“It is reported that the people of the North, especially in the Jaffna district, have developed a feeling of dissatisfaction, disaffection and contempt towards the people of the South, who post the end of the war are now engaging in pilgrimage and sightseeing related visits to the North in large numbers, and in the process totally disregarding the need for privacy, encroaching on meagre infrastructure resources and services of the district, causing significant negative impact on the environment/cleanliness and pollution in the area, and behaving in a manner unacceptable by the cultural and religious values of the Northerners.
These negative feelings are expressed in relation to the following issues highlighted in support of the …
March 3, 2010 at 11:16 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, Development, Diaspora, Foreign Relations, International Relations, Jaffna, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Groundviews
Prof. Kumar David, an electrical engineer by training, regular columnist in traditional print media and a frequent commentator on Groundviews, talks about what’s left of leftist politics in Sri Lanka, the end of war and its impact on Tamil diaspora juxtaposed against th autocratic and essentially one-party rule in Sri Lanka.
I also asked him about the growing web and Internet censorship, which in a recent column he had referred to as a disturbing retrogression into a Lanka Internet Dark Age (LIDA).
March 2, 2010 at 3:00 am · Categories: Human Rights, Human Security, IDPs and Refugees, Jaffna, Mannar, Peace and Conflict, Vavuniya | by Devanesan Nesiah
Sri Lanka has been increasingly the scene of much ethnic violence. The Northern Muslims are the victims of the earliest large scale act of ethnic cleansing in our history. Close to 80,000 persons, constituting the entire Muslim population of the five Northern Districts of Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya, Mullaithivu and Kilinochchi were summarily expelled from the province by the LTTE on one fateful day in October 1990 at a few hours notice. The details of the constraints imposed on the victims varied from location to location depending on the degree of brutality of the local LTTE leadership, but nowhere were those evicted able to sell, transfer or otherwise secure or dispose of their property or to take with them cash or …
March 1, 2010 at 10:15 pm · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Identity, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Rohini Hensman
I have always argued that the deepest division in Sri Lanka is not the so-called ethnic divide but the split between supporters of democracy and supporters of totalitarianism, and the presidential elections proved this point. Bitter arguments within the Sinhalese community generated by the candidacy of Sarath Fonseka completely demolished the manufactured image of a community united behind Mahinda Rajapaksa which had been projected immediately after the end of the war. There was understandable relief among Sinhalese that there would be no more bomb blasts in buses, trains, shops and markets, no more young men being sent to the front to die in their thousands or come back disabled. But this did not necessarily translate into universal approval for Rajapaksa.
Gratitude …
February 27, 2010 at 8:24 pm · Categories: Colombo, Identity, Religion and faith | by Nalaka Gunawardene
Two years ago, in a moment of panic, I rushed my young daughter to Colombo’s only children’s hospital. To be honest, I don’t normally turn to our overcrowded government hospitals for healthcare. But a doctor friend had recommended the Lady Ridgeway Hospital as the best place for administering the anti-rabies vaccine.
As with all government hospitals, they first wanted to record the patient’s basic bio data. Fair enough. I provided the child’s name, age and street address. For some reason, the form also asked for the patient’s religion. Before I could say anything, the nurse in charge wrote ‘Buddhist’.
Now, this was both incorrect and highly presumptuous. But when I objected, it sparked off an argument. The formidable woman insisted that …
February 24, 2010 at 12:07 pm · Categories: Arts and Theatre, Colombo, Fiction / Creative Writing, Identity, Language, Media and Communications, Religion and faith | by Sanjana Hattotuwa
Ameena Hussein is one of Sri Lanka’s best known English authors. She is also one half of the Perera Hussein Publishing House, that since 2003 has published some of the best new English writing in the country. The Moon in the Water, Ameena’s first novel, was long-listed for the first Man Asian Literary Award in 2009. Zillij, a collection of short stories I reviewed four years ago, won the State Literary Prize in 2003.
Our discussion touched on Ameena’s tryst with cancer and how this influenced her writing and outlook on life. We also talked about English literature in …
February 24, 2010 at 11:02 am · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Politics and Governance | by Kusal Perera
I have read and heard of W. Dahanayake travelling to Colombo from Galle in the morning “Ruhunu Kumari” train with all those other ordinary passengers, getting off at the Kollupitiya station to go to his ministry in Union Place, when he was Co-operative Minister in the J.R. Jayawardne government. That was in early 1980’s.
There were other MPs and Ministers too in the past, who used to travel by train to Colombo, to attend parliamentary sessions. Some even booked sleeping berths, for they travelled through night from Jaffna or Badulla, to be in parliament for the morning sessions. None of them then would have ever thought of themselves being elected representatives of the people, going about with armed security escorting them. …
February 23, 2010 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | by Seethi Ironi
Mahinda Rajapaksa seems to be turning into his one-time enemies. During the reign of terror (bheeshanaya) in the late 1980s, which was started by J.R.Jayawardene and continued by R.Premadasa, around 60,000 Sinhalese were tortured, disappeared and killed by the state. At that time, Rajapaksa collected evidence of these crimes and took them to the international community, the UN. For doing this, he was called a ‘traitor’.
Now it is Rajapaksa’s own regime that is guilty of torture, disappearances and killings, of Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. And he is the one who calls anyone offering to give evidence of these crimes to the international community ‘traitors’!
A more recent enemy of Rajapaksa was Prabakaran. He claimed to be the sole representative of Tamils …
February 21, 2010 at 10:30 pm · Categories: Colombo, Fiction / Creative Writing, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict | by Gypsy Bohemia
A solitary lamp perched on a desk top lights a room. A man scribbles feverishly on paper, hunched over the light as if he’s jealously guarding what little he has. His desk is cluttered with cartoons and drawings – some of a President, others of two small children. He holds down his paper with one hand and writes with the other, so violently that other loose papers and articles shuffle with his movements.
He is breathing hard, as if he’s run to his desk from sleep, taken by wild inspiration. He has forgotten to switch on the fan, and the heat of that December night hangs in the air, thickening like spoiling milk. Small explosions of sweat begin to burst from …
February 21, 2010 at 1:11 pm · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Kusal Perera
Are we honestly serious in wanting democracy, our rights and human development, to live in Sri Lanka ? If we are, how are we seeing to it, that we do really enjoy such a luxury in this beleaguered nation ?
All what had been happening and allowed to happen, don’t in any way even hint that this country is at least serious about living by the day, leave alone democracy, rights and development for the future.
If the people were serious, this society would not be entertaining any of the rubbish that is doled out as politics and promises by political leaderships, blue, green or red, at every election for 62 years. If the people are serious, this country would not have …
February 20, 2010 at 9:16 am · Categories: Colombo, Politics and Governance, Religion and faith | by Malinda Seneviratne
Sometimes words are used so often and so uncritically that they not only lose communicative value but those who utter them and those who hear them no longer know what they mean. We really don’t know what ‘democracy’ means, do we? Decency, anyone? How about justice? Love? There are thousands of such words and terms including ‘people’, ‘sustainability’, ‘development’ and ‘hegemony’, but I am thinking of a name, an acronym, a term, a phenomenon, a curse and an agent, all rolled into one. NGO.
Non-Governmental Organization. I first heard it in May 1988 at the Marga Institute, while engaged in a study of development assistance, its sources and destinations. It didn’t take long for acronym to comfortably replace term. And so …
February 18, 2010 at 6:41 am · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Sudat Pasqual
There is a joke that has been floating for a while with regard to the value added by lawyers to our daily existence.
It asks the question whether you know the difference between a lawyer and a catfish.
If you are interested, the answer is; one is a fish and the other is a bottom dwelling scum sucker.
In fairness to the lawyer fraternity, it should be noted that the above only applies to a miniscule number among them. Most are honorable men and women who ply their trade according to the laws of the land and obviously the implied negativity does not apply to them.
Unfortunately, the few bad apples among the law fraternity have a tendency to ascend to positions of power …
February 17, 2010 at 6:30 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Kalana Senaratne
Mr. Gomin Dayasiri’s article, titled ‘Tamil Grievances – Untouched & Unattended’ (Daily Mirror, 16 February 2010) reveals the Sinhala nationalist perspective concerning the kind of solution necessary for the resolution of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. It is an important piece, written by a respected senior lawyer, a nationalist. The author points to some valuable propositions. But there are certain aspects of it which are disturbing. The fundamental appeal made by Mr. Dayasiri reflects, to a large extent, a kind of home-grown version of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘white man’s burden’.
Mr. Dayasiri argues that the ‘government had failed to attend to the legitimate grievances of the Tamils’ and reminds us that if it continues to fail in this regard, …
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